Saturday, July 05, 2014

After failing to move forward on forming a government last Tuesday, the Iraqi Parliament plans/hopes to meet this coming week and start the formation of a government.

Up for grabs? The three presidencies.

This is the Speaker of Parliament, the Prime Minister and the President.

Jalal Talabani has had two terms as president and, even if he was healthy enough, can't seek a third term per the Constitution. So Iraq should have a new president at some point. They should also have a new Speaker of Parliament (as we'll discuss in a second). Which leaves the post of prime minister.

Despot Nouri al-Maliki wants a third term.

Alsumaria reports that State of Law MP Khalid al-Asadi declared today that they are willing to accept anyone as Speaker of Parliament except Osama al-Nujaifi. State of Law's always a little slower on the pick up than any other political coalition in Iraq. A little slower, a little more dense. Thursday, Osama announced he would not be seeking a second term as Speaker of Parliament. He repeated this on Friday. NINA notes US Ambassador to Iraq Stephen Beecroft and UK Ambassador to Iraq Simon Collis "have praised the brave stance" Osama al-Nujaifi has taken.

This includes failing with regards to security. With cities falling to rebels, violence soaring, it can be argued that Iraq's currently at its most unstable since 2003. Mu Xuequan (Xinhua) reports:

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the man purported to be the top
leader of the self-claimed "Islamic State, " made his first public
appearance at a mosque in Iraq's northern city of Mosul, according to a
video clip posted on the Internet on Saturday.The video appearance came a few days after the Islamic State in Iraq
and Levant (ISIL), an al-Qaida breakaway group, proclaimed the
establishment of a "caliphate" straddling Syria and Iraq, crowned its
leader Baghdadi as the "caliph," and changed its name into the "Islamic
State(IS)."

Reuters also reports on the video and notes that "the Iraqi government denied the authenticity of the 21-minute video, which carried Friday's date." Khalid Al-Ansary and Caroline Alexander (Bloomberg News) observe:There were conflicting reports about the identity of the
man in the video. An appearance by Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi
with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head, would signal a brazen
challenge to Iraq's government as it intensifies its offensive
against the Islamic State, the militant group formerly known as
the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.

As cities began falling to rebels in Iraq, there were a group of foreign nurses trapped in the country.

Alsumaria reports over 40 boarded a plane to India. Belfast Telegraph adds, "The 46 nurses had been holed up for more than a week in Tikrit, where fighters of the Islamic State group have taken over." Indian Express notes, "Nearly 600 more Indian nationals will return home from the conflict-hit
Iraq over the next two days, the Ministry of External Affairs said on
Saturday. It said 200 of them will return by an Iraqi Airways special
chartered flight from Najaf to Delhi late Saturday night itself." They also note "there are about 7,500 Indians in non-conflict zones left" in Iraq. The Times of India speaks with 25-year-old nurse P Lesima Jerose Monisha who went to work in Iraq in hopes of paying off her student loans:Though
the insurgents assured them they would not be harmed, there was always a
fear that a bomb would land on the hospital, she said.She
said the scariest moment was when the militants gave them just two hours
to get ready and leave the hospital on July 2. "Indian embassy
officials told us over phone to follow the gunmen's instructions for our
own safety." Monisha said they were taken in a bus to Mosul where they
were detained in a jail-like building. Finally on Friday they were onceagain told to pack up their belongings and board a bus. "Only then we
realized we are being released. The insurgents released us on the
outskirts of Mosul from where Indian embassy officials took care of us,"
she said.

Along with failing to provide security, Nouri's also launched repeated attacks on Iraqis. Nouri continues bombing residential areas in Falluja (legally defined as a War Crime). Alsumaria reports Falluja General Hospital received five men and four women who were injured in one of Nouri's bombings. NINA notes a second Falluja bombing left 6 civilians dead and seven more injured.

The Kurdistan Regional Government is comprised of northern provinces in Iraq. The KRG is semi-autonomous. Since the US invasion of Iraq, the Kurds have often been termed "king makers." Why? Because when the US needs them, the Kurds usually go along with whatever the US government wants at that moment.

In other news, the White House is objecting to the Kurds exercising their Constitutional right to explore full automony. Oh, look, Barack's stabbed the Kurds in the back.Again.Again.Can someone please tell the White House spokesperson to not take a
position on Kurdish issues at a time when the White House desperately
needs the help of the Kurds?Or is the spokesperson expressing Barack's desire to f**k up repeatedly on Iraq?This is not a White House concern, nor is it anything that's going to happen in the next few weeks.So maybe the White House could learn to keep their big nose out? Maybe
Barack and company could learn that the world doesn't need an opinion on
them about every damn thing? That sometimes, especially when you're
attempting diplomacy, the smartest thing you can do is not express
opinions on side issues when you know the opinions will only anger the
people whose help you need?

It's beyond stupid but so typical of the US government which honestly believes it has to have and express an opinion on whatever any other country might consider.

Iranian
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham said on Saturday that
Iraqis will never accept disintegration of their homeland.

She reiterated in a statement reviewed by All Iraq News Agency "Iran's support for Iraq's solidarity and territorial integrity."

So the US government is on the same page as the Iranian government.

When that tends to happen, Iraqis tend to get screwed over. (See 2010 when the US and Iran decided to override the Constitution and the Iraqi voters to give Nouri a second term.)

If the Kurds want to pursue an option, who says other governments get a say?

And when the US government desperately needs the help of the Kurds, why are they pissing them off?

The White House is beyond stupid. Reality, sewing dissension among Kurdistan officials is not complicated or difficult. If the White House wants to bloc Kurdish independence, it could easily do so that way.

But to take a position on it publicly, to rebuke the notion before the world? At a time when you need the Kurds?

For those who missed it, Thursday, KRG President Massoud Barzani spoke to the KRG Parliament and declared they needed to create an independent electoral commission for Kurdistan and that they needed to have a referendum on the KRG's future.

There was no need for a White House 'response.'

I would hope Jay Carney would have had the brains to grasp that. The new White House spokesperson did not have the brains.

Now maybe the KRG will move immediately on what was requested.

But is that highly likely?

The KRG held provincial election September 2013. It's July 2014 and they've only recently settled on a prime minister and deputies.

Is it really likely that they're going to get it together enough to move in the next few weeks on Barzani's request?

My own personal opinion is that the KRG needs to do what they feel is best. I support the right of autonomy.

But if the White House doesn't, they need to learn when to be silent.

If they lose the support of the Kurds right now, any diplomatic measures the US government hopes to successfully carry out in Iraq are doomed.

He was a presidential patron, then a pariah; an alleged fraud, then
an economic saviour. And, perhaps more remarkably, he was groomed by
Washington, lured by Iran, and is now being courted by both as a man who
could rescue Iraq.The
mercurial career of Ahmad Chalabi has been central to much of the
turmoil that Iraq has gone through in the past 20 years. From guerrilla
leader in exile in the Kurdish north to the pinup boy of the Pentagon's
war plans, Chalabi was more responsible than any other Iraqi for the
ousting of Saddam Hussein more than a decade ago.

An e-mail asks what I think about Chalabi?

His failings are well known. I'm not particularly fond of the fact that Iraqi exiles keep getting named prime minister but I'm not an Iraqi. It's their country. Their MPs should be representing them.

I doubt anyone could be worse than Nouri al-Maliki.

The Parliament needs to push through the law limiting a prime minister to two terms only and that needs to be accepted by the next prime minister.

That would be the best curb on tyranny.

Chalabi? I would guess he's more interested in being part of a world community than becoming a tyrant. It takes a special kind of pathology to create a despot. Nouri had it. The paranoia made it so.

Another curb on tyranny?

The US government not being silent when bad things happen. Like their silence when Nouri targeted gays and lesbians. Like their silence when he killed peaceful protesters.

Nouri was installed by the US government and protected at the very least by the same government's repeated silence. He's a tyrant but he had a lot of help becoming that.

National Lawyers Guild Submits
Comments for Improving Military Justice System to Department of Defense
Military Justice Review Group

NEW YORK--The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) today submitted comments
to the Defense Department’s Military Justice Review Group as part of
its comprehensive review of the military justice system. Recommendations
to improve the system include eliminating the “convening authority” as
the near-absolute final arbiter of what constitutes justice in a given
case. The NLG also calls for eliminating criminal liability for acts
that are purely military offenses, and for clarifying the effect of a
conviction by summary court-martial.

“We are gratified that this review is taking place, as changes in
the court martial system are long overdue. We do not believe that
anything less than a complete restructuring of the way the military
handles offenses can be adequate. We have, therefore, focused on large
changes, rather than the many small details that could lead to some
incremental improvement without altering the basic inequities that lead
so many to see military justice as an oxymoron," said David Gespass, NLG
past president and one of the authors of the comments.

The NLG was the country’s first integrated national bar association and remains its largest human rights bar association. Its Military Law Task Force (MLTF)
has been defending the rights of military service members for nearly
four decades and, prior to that, it had established offices in Japan and
the Philippines to provide counsel to service members overseas. The
MLTF has relied upon this long experience to formulate its proposals to
the Military Justice Review Group. Its comments do not suggest that the
court-martial system be fine-tuned; rather, they address what we see as
fundamental problems that lead to a general perception of unfairness in
the system as a whole, irrespective of how it may operate in any
particular case.

The National Lawyers Guild believes there are two fundamental
difficulties with the military criminal system as it now exists, both
premised on the false belief that they are needed to maintain
discipline. Notably, at the same time as defenders of the system assert
the need for such discipline, they proclaim the US military as the best,
most professional in history. In particular, if the men and women in
uniform today are so overwhelmingly professional, well-educated and
patriotic, we can be reasonably certain that they will overwhelmingly be
sufficiently disciplined so as not to endanger the strength of the
force.

The NLG believes these recommendations along with clarification
regarding summary court-martial convictions would greatly improve the
military justice system.

U.N. officials condemn Detroit water shutoffs

The shutoff of water to thousands of Detroit homes has become
national and international news. An appeal to the United Nations by
activists about the inhuman, profit-driven shutoffs has resulted in
condemnation of these actions by U.N. officials involved in water and
sanitation issues.

“Disconnection of water services because of failure to pay due to
lack of means constitutes a violation of the human right to water and
other international human rights,” said the experts. (U.N. News Centre,
June 25)

“Disconnections due to non-payment are only permissible if it can be
shown that the resident is able to pay but is not paying. In other
words, when there is genuine inability to pay, human rights simply
forbids disconnections,” explained Catarina de Albuquerque, the first
U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and
sanitation. She was appointed by the Human Rights Council in 2008.

Mass water cutoffs have been accelerating in Detroit. The Water
Department has hired special contractors, under the direction of
Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, as part of restructuring the city in the
ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. Up to 3,000 families a week are being
denied water for failure to pay their water bills. These bills are often
only $125 dollars behind.

Many victims of the shutoffs are already in an agreed-upon payment
plan schedule. It is believed that the aim is to make the Water
Department more attractive as an investment for privatization. This was
confirmed by Bill Nowling, Orr spokesperson, when he stated that “the
shutoff policy is a necessary part of Detroit’s restructuring.” (Detroit
Free Press, June 27)

Detroit’s City Council added to the crisis by approving an 8 percent
increase to water and sewerage rates in mid-June. Protesters have
gathered outside the Water Board Building in downtown Detroit every
Friday for the past two months. Billed as “Freedom Fridays,”
demonstrators have marched throughout the downtown district after
picketing the Water Board.

Protesters occupied the Bank of America office on June 13, demanding
that the corporations and banks stop their attacks on poor and working
people of Detroit.

On June 27, Freedom Friday 8 ended with a rally and speak-out. Those
protesting water shutoffs joined with retired city of Detroit workers
facing huge pension cuts in the Detroit restructuring and others
concerned with the future of the people of Detroit.

Especially galling to many are reports that huge corporate and
institutional water bills are delinquent, but services of those
institutions are not being shut off. Palmer Park Golf Club and the
Veterans Administration hospital are said to owe more than $200,000
each. The Detroit Public Schools system is alleged to be $2.2 million
behind. The Detroit Red Wings hockey rink, Eastern Market and Ford Field
stadium reportedly owe more than $55,000.

The Water Department reports that more than half of residential
customers are behind. Detroit’s high unemployment rate, which is
officially 14.5 percent, and high poverty rate make many families choose
between paying for food, medicine, housing or water.

This is a human rights crisis.

Articles copyright 1995-2014 Workers World. Verbatim copying and
distribution is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this
notice is preserved.

Independent thriller Keeping Rosy has no truck
with managers that tell us we’re one big family—but can’t quite grasp
why we are alienated, says Camille Tsang

Maxine Peake plays Charlotte, whose life falls apart after she loses her career (Pic: Redemption Films)

Keeping Rosy is a new, independent
thriller staring Maxine Peake as Charlotte, who’s done everything to
become the perfect career woman in the competitive world of work.
The film highlights how precarious and alienating workers’ lives can
be, whether you’re a “white collar” office worker or a cleaner.

At any moment, your life could take a turn that is seemingly out of your control.

Charlotte lives alone in Elysium Heights, a new block of flats in
central London that’s reserved for the privileged, “virtuous” few.

But when pushed out of the company, she doesn’t just lose her job.
With it, goes her career and the life she’s built up for herself.

Charlotte takes it out on the cleaner, which leads to a series of events that she cannot escape.

The film deals with the relationship between workers and their employers.

In reality, this relationship is not based on some “loyalty” to a workplace or “trust” in the boss.

That illusion is shattered when Charlotte loses her job. It becomes clear that it’s just about selling a commodity—your ability to work.Loyalty

Despite this, Charlotte tries to get her cleaner to relate to her
with the very same ideas of “trust” and “loyalty” that she now knows to
be false.

The film also highlights how contradictory the stereotypes of women can be, both in the workplace and the home.

When a baby is brought into the office, Charlotte doesn’t really want
to see it. Instead, she asks the woman when she was planning on coming
back to work.

The new mother isn’t that keen on the idea, which really surprises Charlotte.

This plays to the stereotype of the career women, but later on in Charlotte develops a more ­“maternal” instinct.

This goes against the idea that they’re different types of women. In
reality, it all depends on the way material conditions shape us.

However, the film does not explore the contradictions in any real depth.

It’s somewhat nostalgic about the role of the family, presenting it as an unbreakable bond between siblings.

But the saying, “You cannot choose your family” doesn’t acknowledge that the idea of the family comes with its own problems.

The film is a thriller, but in the end leaves you feeling like there should be more to it.

Keeping Rosy deals with important issues, but only touches them on the surface.

Celebrating Independence from America in England

First of all, thank you to Lindis Percy and everyone else involved in
bringing me here, and letting me bring my son Wesley along.

And thank you to the Campaign for the Accountability of American
Bases. I know you share my view that accountability of American bases
would lead to elimination of American bases.

And thank you to Lindis for sending me her accounts of refusing to be
arrested unless the police disarmed themselves. In the United States,
refusing any sort of direction from a police officer will get you
charged with the crime of refusing a lawful order, even when the order
is unlawful. In fact, that's often the only charge levied against people
ordered to cease protests and demonstrations that in theory are
completely legal. And, of course, telling a U.S. police officer to
disarm could quite easily get you locked up for insanity if it didn't
get you shot.

Can I just say how wonderful it is to be outside of the United States
on the Fourth of July? There are many wonderful and beautiful things
in the United States, including my family and friends, including
thousands of truly dedicated peace activists, including people bravely
going to prison to protest the murders by drone of others they've never
met in distant lands whose loved ones will probably never hear about the
sacrifices protesters are making. (Did you know the commander of a
military base in New York State has court orders of protection to keep
specific nonviolent peace activists away from his base to ensure his
physical safety -- or is it his peace of mind?) And, of course,
millions of Americans who tolerate or celebrate wars or climate
destruction are wonderful and even heroic in their families and
neighborhoods and towns -- and that's valuable too.

I've been cheering during U.S. World Cup games. But I cheer for
neighborhood, city, and regional teams too. And I don't talk about the
teams as if I'm them. I don't say "We scored!" as I sit in a chair
opening a beer. And I don't say "We won!" when the U.S. military
destroys a nation, kills huge numbers of people, poisons the earth,
water, and air, creates new enemies, wastes trillions of dollars, and
passes its old weapons to the local police who restrict our rights in
the name of wars fought in the name of freedom. I don't say "We lost!"
either. We who resist have a responsibility to resist harder, but not to
identify with the killers, and certainly not to imagine that the men,
women, children, and infants being murdered by the hundreds of thousands
constitute an opposing team wearing a different uniform, a team whose
defeat by hellfire missile I should cheer for.

Identifying with my street or my town or my continent doesn't lead
the same places that identifying with the
military-plus-some-minor-side-services that calls itself my national
government leads. And it's very hard to identify with my street; I have
such little control over what my neighbors do. And I can't manage to
identify with my state because I've never even seen most of it. So,
once I start identifying abstractly with people I don't know, I see no
sensible argument for stopping anywhere short of identifying with
everybody, rather than leaving out 95% and identifying with the United
States, or leaving out 90% and identifying with the so-called
"International Community" that cooperates with U.S. wars. Why not just
identify with all humans everywhere? On those rare occasions when we
learn the personal stories of distant or disparaged people, we're
supposed to remark, "Wow, that really humanizes them!" Well, I'd like to
know, what were they before those details made them humanized?

In the U.S. there are U.S. flags everywhere all the time now, and
there's a military holiday for every day of the year. But the Fourth of
July is the highest holiday of holy nationalism. More than any other
day, you're likely to see children being taught to pledge allegiance to a
flag, regurgitating a psalm to obedience like little fascist robots.
You're more likely to hear the U.S. national anthem, the Star Spangled
Banner. Who knows which war the words of that song come from?

That's right, the War of Canadian Liberation, in which the United
States tried to liberate Canadians (not for the first or last time) who
welcomed them much as the Iraqis would later do, and the British burned
Washington. Also known as the War of 1812, the bicentennial was
celebrated in the U.S. two years ago. During that war, which killed
thousands of Americans and Brits, mostly through disease, during one
pointless bloody battle among others, plenty of people died, but a flag
survived. And so we celebrate the survival of that flag by singing
about the land of the free that imprisons more people than anywhere else
on earth and the home of the brave that strip-searches airplane
passengers and launches wars if three Muslims shout "boo!"

Did you know the U.S. flag was recalled? You know how a car will be
recalled by the manufacturer if the brakes don't work? A satirical paper
called the Onion reported that the U.S. flag had been recalled after
resulting in 143 million deaths. Better late than never.

There are many wonderful and rapidly improving elements in U.S.
culture. It has become widely and increasingly unacceptable to be
bigoted or prejudiced against people, at least nearby people, because of
their race, sex, sexual orientation, and other factors. It still goes
on, of course, but it's frowned upon. I had a conversation last year
with a man sitting in the shadow of a carving of confederate generals on
a spot that used to be sacred to the Ku Klux Klan, and I realized that
he would never, even if he thought it, say something racist about blacks
in the United States to a stranger he'd just met. And then he told me
he'd like to see the entire Middle East wiped out with nuclear bombs.

We've had comedians' and columnists' careers ended over racist or
sexist remarks, but weapons CEOs joke on the radio about wanting big new
occupations of certain countries, and nobody blinks. We have antiwar
groups that push for celebration of the military on Memorial Day and
other days like this one. We have so-called progressive politicians who
describe the military as a jobs program, even though it actually
produces fewer jobs per dollar than education or energy or
infrastructure or never taxing those dollars at all. We have peace
groups that argue against wars on the grounds that the military needs to
be kept ready for other, possibly more important wars. We have peace
groups that oppose military waste, when the alternative of military
efficiency is not what's needed. We have libertarians who oppose wars
because they cost money, exactly as they oppose schools or parks. We
have humanitarian warriors who argue for wars because of their
compassion for the people they want bombed. We have peace groups that
side with the libertarians and urge selfishness, arguing for schools at
home instead of bombs for Syrians, without explaining that we could give
actual aid to Syrians and ourselves for a fraction of the cost of the
bombs.

We have liberal lawyers who say they can't tell whether blowing
children up with drones is legal or not, because President Obama has a
secret memo (now only partially secret) in which he legalizes it by
making it part of a war, and they haven't seen the memo, and as a matter
of principle they, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch,
ignore the U.N. Charter, the Kellogg Briand Pact, and the illegality of
war. We have people arguing that bombing Iraq is now a good thing
because it finally gets the U.S. and Iran talking to each other. We
have steadfast refusals to mention a half-million to a
million-and-a-half Iraqis based on the belief that Americans can only
possibly care about 4,000 Americans killed in Iraq. We have earnest
crusades to turn the U.S. military into a force for good, and the
inevitable demand of those who begin to turn against war, that the
United States must lead the way to peace -- when of course the world would be thrilled if it just brought up the rear.

And yet, we also have tremendous progress. A hundred years ago
Americans were listening to snappy tunes about how hunting Huns was a
fun game to play, and professors were teaching that war builds national
character. Now war has to be sold as necessary and humanitarian because
nobody believes it's fun or good for you anymore. Polls in the United
States put support for possible new wars below 20 percent and sometimes
below 10 percent. After the House of Commons over here said No to
missile strikes on Syria, Congress listened to an enormous public uproar
in the U.S. and said No as well. In February, public pressure led to
Congress backing off a new sanctions bill on Iran that became widely
understood as a step toward war rather than away from it. A new war on
Iraq is having to be sold and developed slowly in the face of huge
public resistance that has even resulted in some prominent advocates of
war in 2003 recently recanting.

This shift in attitude toward wars is largely the result of the wars
on Afghanistan and Iraq and the exposure of the lies and horrors
involved. We shouldn't underestimate this trend or imagine that it's
unique to the question of Syria or Ukraine. People are turning against
war. For some it may be all about the money. For others it may be a
question of which political party owns the White House. The Washington
Post has a poll showing that almost nobody in the U.S. can find Ukraine
on a map, and those who place it furthest from where it really lies are
most likely to want a U.S. war there, including those who place it in
the United States. One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. Yet the
larger trend is this: from geniuses right down to morons, we are, most
of us, turning against war. The Americans who want Ukraine attacked are
fewer than those believing in ghosts, U.F.O.s, or the benefits of
climate change.

Now, the question is whether we can shake off the idea that after
hundreds of bad wars there just might be a good one around the corner.
To do that we have to recognize that wars and militaries make us less
safe, not safer. We have to understand that Iraqis aren't ungrateful
because they're stupid but because the U.S. and allies destroyed their
home.

We can pile even more weight on the argument for ending the
institution of war. These U.S. spy bases are used for targeting
missiles but also for spying on governments and companies and
activists. And what justifies the secrecy? What allows treating
everyone as an enemy? Well, one necessary component is the concept of
an enemy. Without wars nations lose enemies. Without enemies, nations
lose excuses to abuse people. Britain was the first enemy manufactured
by the would-be rulers of the United States on July 4, 1776. And yet
King George's abuses don't measure up to the abuses our governments now
engage in, justified by their traditions of war making and enabled by
the sort of technologies housed here.

War is our worst destroyer of the natural environment, the worst
generator of human rights abuses, a leading cause of death and creator
of refugee crises. It swallows some $2 trillion a year globally, while
tens of billions could alleviate incredible suffering, and hundreds of
billions could pay for a massive shift to renewable energies that might
help protect us from an actual danger.

What we need now is a movement of education and lobbying and
nonviolent resistance that doesn't try to civilize war but to take steps
in the direction of abolishing it -- which begins by realizing that we
can abolish it. If we can stop missiles into Syria, there's no magical
force that prevents our stopping missiles into every other country. War
is not a primal urge of nations that must burst out a little later if
once suppressed. Nations aren't real like that. War is a decision made
by people, and one that we can make utterly unacceptable.

People in dozens of countries are now working on a campaign for the
elimination of all war called World Beyond War. Please check out
WorldBeyondWar.org or talk to me about getting involved. Our goal is to
bring many more people and organizations into a movement not aimed at a
specific war proposal from a specific government, but at the entire
institution of war everywhere. We'll have to work globally to do this.
We'll have to throw our support behind the work being done by groups
like the Campaign for Accountability of American Bases and the Movement
for the Abolition of War and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and
Veterans For Peace and so many more.

Some friends of ours in Afghanistan, the Afghan Peace Volunteers,
have proposed that everyone living under the same blue sky who wants to
move the world beyond war wear a sky blue scarf. You can make your own
or find them at TheBlueScarf.org. I hope by wearing this to communicate
my sense of connection to those back in the United States working for
actual freedom and bravery, and my same sense of connection to those in
the rest of the world who have had enough of war. Happy Fourth of July!

press@ccrjustice.orgJuly 2, 2014, New York – In response to a new report
that addresses warrantless NSA searches made possible by a particular
section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act (FISA),
the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the statement below. The
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) had previously
addressed the collection of communications metadata, and here looked at
the implications of collection of communications content under Section
702 of FISA.

The Privacy Board’s report is disappointingly
superficial with respect to the main constitutional concerns raised
here. The board includes no mention whatsoever of free speech, due
process, and right to counsel when analyzing the legality of the NSA’s
collection of the content of communications between U.S. residents and
persons of interest abroad. Deeply troubling, the report found that
attorneys’ legally-privileged communications are used and shared by the
NSA, CIA and FBI unless they are communications directly with a client
who has already been indicted in U.S. courts, which strongly suggests
that the contents of privileged attorney-client communications at
Guantanamo are subject to NSA warrantless surveillance. This raises
serious concerns about the fairness of the military commission system
and would seem to violate court orders entered in Guantanamo habeas
cases that protect attorney-client privilege.

Attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights, in addition to
representing men detained at Guantanamo since its earliest days, have
been involved in challenging
NSA surveillance since the initial revelations of warrantless spying in
December 2005 that cast a chilling effect over their work litigating
against the government.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is
dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the
United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights
movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational
organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force
for social change.

Friday, July 04, 2014

CBS and AP report thug Nouri al-Malik is portraying himself as the one who can defeat the 'terrorists' and this implies "he won't step down despite pressure for him to do so." All Iraq News reports that Nouri has issued a statement today announcing he remains determined to seek a third term as prime minister. Mark Landler, Michael R. Gordon and Mark Mazzetti (New York Times) observe, "Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is still insisting on a third term,
but Kurdish, Sunni and even some Shiite politicians say a new prime
minister must be selected, which also portends more wrangling."

Al Jazeera adds:Sistani on Friday reiterated his call for the new government to have
"broad national acceptance", a formulation many officials have
interpreted as a signal Maliki should step aside.Also on Friday, Osama al-Nujaifi, former Iraqi parliament speaker
and a major political foe of Maliki, said he would not nominate himself
for another term to make it easier for the Shia political parties to
replace the prime minister.

Tuesday, Iraq's Parliament met for the first time since the April 30th election and they were unable to name a Speaker of Parliament. NINA reports
today that Osama al-Nujaifi (who became Speaker in November 2010) has
announced he is withdrawing his name for that post. Along with the
Speaker of Parliament, the President of Iraq and Prime Minister of Iraq
are the posts to be decided by Parliament.

All Iraq News notes Osama made his statement on TV Thursday and that he issued a statement today repeating that he was not seeking the post of Speaker of Parliament.

Within a short span, Maliki’s police state effectively purged
most of them from politics, parking American-supplied M1A1 tanks
outside the Sunni leaders’ homes before arresting them. Within hours of
the withdrawal of U.S. forces in December 2011, Maliki sought the arrest
of his longtime rival Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, eventually
sentencing him to death in absentia. The purge of Finance Minister Rafea
al-Essawi followed a year later.

Iraq's suffered so much. Nouri's desire for a third term is not helping anyone but Nouri.

Can someone please tell the White House spokesperson to not take a position on Kurdish issues at a time when the White House desperately needs the help of the Kurds?

Or is the spokesperson expressing Barack's desire to f**k up repeatedly on Iraq?

This is not a White House concern, nor is it anything that's going to happen in the next few weeks.

So maybe the White House could learn to keep their big nose out? Maybe Barack and company could learn that the world doesn't need an opinion on them about every damn thing? That sometimes, especially when you're attempting diplomacy, the smartest thing you can do is not express opinions on side issues when you know the opinions will only anger the people whose help you need?

Erbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRP.org / KRG.org) – Kurdistan
Region President Masoud Barzani visited the Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament
yesterday, requesting the Parliament to immediately undertake the task
of creating an independent electoral commission for the Region, and to
begin preparations for holding a referendum for the people of Kurdistan
to decide their future.
In his remarks to the Parliament, the President urged Members of
Parliament to “promptly create an independent electoral commission and
to begin preparations for holding a referendum to determine the future,
as this would strengthen our hand. The time has come for us to determine
our future; we should no longer wait for others to determine our
future. In the meantime, we will do whatever we can to help Shia and
Sunnis to save the country from this crisis.”
The President stated that the wrong policies of the Iraqi government
and the collapse of the Iraqi Army have caused the current security
crisis in the governorates of Anbar, Ninewa, Salahaddin, and Diyala. He
said that four days prior to the events in Mosul the KRG offered to
cooperate with Baghdad to confront the terrorist groups, but this was
rejected by Baghdad. Regarding the deployment of Peshmerga forces to the disputed areas, the
President said that all of these areas are now under the control of
Peshmerga forces. He added, “The Peshmerga forces are there to protect
the people of those areas and they will not be pressured into
withdrawing. We will protect these areas and we are also ready to help
both Shia and Sunnis to save them from this crisis, but this can only be
achieved with new people who believe in co-existence, democracy, and
the Constitution. This cannot be done with people who have destroyed the
country.”

Kurdish gains of more than a decade are under threat from latest Middle East crisis

For the region’s Kurdish minority, both sides of the current upheaval stand in the way of liberation, writes Ron Margulies

Kurdistan Workers' Party soldiers (Pic: Flickr/James Gordon)

The Kurdish people have a lot to lose
from the crisis in the Middle East. The emergence of the Islamic State
of Iraq and Syria (Isis) is a direct threat to the Kurds, against which
all Kurdish forces have mobilised.
But there is also a recurring threat that the major states will use
the chaotic circumstances to deal with the Kurds, as they often have in
the past.

The Kurds live in a well?defined area, where they are the
overwhelming majority. But this is divided between four countries—the
south-eastern corner of Turkey, and the adjacent parts of Syria, Iraq
and Iran.
The fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East, after Arabs,
Persians and Turks, and numbering 30-40 million, the Kurds have never
had a state of their own.

Their history in each of the countries where they live has been one
of oppression, sometimes more brutal, sometimes less, and revolts,
always put down bloodily.
In modern Turkey, for example, their very existence was officially
denied. They were claimed to be “mountain Turks”, and their language to
be a dialect of Turkish. But Kurdish is an Indo-European language while
Turkish is Altaic, with its roots in central Asia.

There were a number of Kurdish uprisings in the 1920s and 1930s, put
down with extreme violence. In the 1980s, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PFF) launched a guerrilla struggle. After 30 years and more than 40,000
dead, it has finally forced the Turkish state to the negotiating table.

Today, Turkey’s rulers have two main aims in the region.

One is to talk about an imaginary golden age under the Ottoman
Empire, and become the main force in the Middle East. The other is to
stop anything that could lead to Turkey’s Kurdish minority breaking
away.
Turkey is a majority Sunni country and its government likes to play
the Sunni card. It both sympathises with Sunnis in Syria and Iraq, and
would like to use them for its own purposes.

It is thought likely that the government secretly supported Isis, at
least at the beginning. If they did, they bitterly regret it now, as
Isis attacked the Turkish consulate in Mosul and is keeping dozens of
diplomats and staff hostage.

In Iraq and Iran, Kurdish history was similarly bloody, with
genocidal campaigns against them both by the Shah of Iran and Saddam
Hussein.

However, in Iraq, an uprising against Hussein in 1991 and the First
Gulf War saw guerrilla forces drive the Iraqi army out of the Kurdish
northern parts of the country.

A period of self-rule was followed in 2005 by the recognition of
Iraqi Kurdistan—or South Kurdistan, as Kurds prefer to call it—as a
federal part of Iraq. The region is now effectively an independent
state.
The US-led occupation forces and the government it set up preferred
to accept the Kurds’ autonomy rather than risk generalised resistance
from across Iraqi society.

Similarly, the chaos in Syria has also allowed the Kurds there to
create an autonomous region as Bashar al Assad’s regime focused on
putting down the broader uprising. But these bastions of Kurdish rule are precarious in the shifting political sands of the Middle East.

Kurdish successes have alarmed Iran and Turkey, while the Syrian and Iraqi governments are in no state even to be alarmed. No ruler feels in control, and the gains made by the Kurds in the past decade or so are under threat.

A
total of 110,000 Ukrainians who have left for Russia in an attempt to
save their lives probably just want to visit their relatives and then
travel back, State Department
spokeswoman Marie Harf said at a briefing, thus calling into question
the tremendous number of people reported to be now seeking asylum in
Russia. The United States generally doubts the UN figures on Ukraine
refugees, endorsing Petr Poroshenko's decision to
resume the punitive operation in Ukraine's southeast. Meanwhile, the
so-called ceasefire is something that never happened, stresses VR's
expert Francis Boyle, a professor at the University of Illinois College
of Law.

"There
was not much about a ceasefire to talk about, Poroshenko's hostilities
continued, there was firing across the border with Russia."

The
declared ceasefire served as an opportunity, a pretext taken up by
Poroshenko to step up the sweeping military campaign and "bring up
major military forces that we're now seeing unleashed on the Russian
speakers in Donbass."

Mr.
Boyle comprehends these outrageous acts as war crimes, openly calling
these crimes against humanity "verging on genocide." The order
clearly arrived from the US, as despite the preceding four-way talks
between the European foreign chiefs and the agreement President Putin
clinched with his European counterparts, Poroshenko still chose to
persist on with his military campaign.

'We could see the whole thing quite quickly collapsing into outright genocide against cities and people there.'

"It's
clear that he's been ordered to do this by the United States government
just before ending of the so-called ceasefire. President
Putin spoke with France's Hollande and Merkel of Germany and thought
he'd reached an agreement to deescalate the conflict, but apparently the
Americans ordered Poroshenko to go forward with his offensive."

Poroshenko
seems to have been pushed into turning a deaf ear to anything that
Russia's Lavrov has previously worked out with his EU colleagues,
and it's clearly not the decision that Poroshenko took himself. A most
biased approach is all there, the expert concludes, adding the coming
days may see "total hell breaking loose" in the region.

WASHINGTON, D.C.— After
the White House announced plans to nominate Robert McDonald for
secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Chairman Jeff Miller
released the following statement:

“If confirmed by the Senate, Robert McDonald will inherit a
Department of Veterans Affairs under a specter of corruption that may
very well surpass anything in the history of American government. In
order to pave the way for serious and substantive reforms that will help
VA to effectively deliver the care and benefits our veterans have
earned, he’ll need to root out the culture of dishonesty and fraud that
has taken hold within the department and is contributing to all of its
most pressing challenges. Quite simply, those who created the VA scandal
will need to be purged from the system. Personnel changes, however,
won’t be enough. The only way McDonald can set the department up for
long term success is to take the opposite approach of some other VA
senior leaders. That means focusing on solving problems instead of
downplaying or hiding them, holding employees accountable for
mismanagement and negligence that harms veterans, and understanding that
taxpayer funded organizations such as VA have a responsibility to
provide information to Congress and the public rather than stonewalling
them.” – Rep. Jeff Miller, Chairman, House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.